


Loose Ends

by orphan_account



Series: The Eighth Doctor Adventures with Suzie Costello [5]
Category: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Community: angst_bingo, Community: au_bingo, Community: hc_bingo, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:11:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suzie returns to Cardiff to fix her timeline (canonically, the events of "Everything Changes" and "They Keep Killing Suzie")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loose Ends

**Author's Note:**

> au_bingo : criminals  
> hc_bingo: confession in desperate situation  
> and angst_bingo : using others or being used

Suzie stepped out of the TARDIS. She pulled out a bolt cutter from her Torchwood bag. One of the Doctor’s ex-companions—he couldn’t recall which, but he thought it was a companion he picked up between Leela and Romana’s first incarnation—left it in the TARDIS after a very quick journey with him. Suzie cut the lock off the storage unit and opened the door. She looked at the contents of the storage unit briefly, rifling through papers and picking up items in boxes. At one point, she put a book into her bag. After looking through the storage container, Suzie pulled out a set of matches. She struck one of the matches and threw it into the storage unit. The contents inside the unit quickly caught on fire.

“I have to say, burning your personal belongings Torchwood put in Torchwood storage is probably the strangest way to set your timeline right.”

“I’m only doing with Vritra told me to do: make sure Torchwood doesn’t find out about Pilgrim. They can’t use the gauntlet to find out, mercifully. I have to destroy the rest of the evidence. Then I can travel the universe with you again. I’ll be a nameless traveller in space just like you, Doctor.”

“Suzie, you never told me what Pilgrim was.”

“I’ll tell you more after we visit the hospital.”

  
The TARDIS materialized in Greenleaves, a hospital somewhere in Wales. Suzie stepped out of the TARDIS. The Doctor followed her, but at a distance.

The two walked down a hallway until they reached a room with a man of Indian decent hooked up on life support. The Doctor watched Suzie at a distance through the doorway of the | hospital room.

Suzie walked up to the man in the bed. She pulled up a chair, woke the man up and held his hand.

“Hullo, Dad? How are you?”

Suzie’s father smiled.

“I decided to leave my job and go on a road trip with a stranger for a couple of months. It was the best time of my life. You know, I almost died on this trip. And, would you believe it, Vritra tried to kill me. Twice! Vritra, even. No, Dad, I didn’t do any drugs. I fought Vritra, won and became a knight.

“Do you know what death feels like? It’s nothing but darkness. You stop breathing, your organs stop working and that’s it. You don’t get to go to the afterlife. There’s no paradise for the good or hell for the wicked. It’s darkness, only darkness.

Suzie’s father slowly stopped smiling.

“I was relieved when I died. I knew you weren’t going to go to someplace special when you died. That would be too good for you. A man who chokes and beats his daughter, his only daughter, with belts and his own fists deserves darkness. And for the stupidest stuff. ‘Suzie, you’re eating a Mars Bar.’ Smack. ‘Suzie, don’t date that white guy—our religion frowns upon it.’ Smack. Dad—I don’t even know why I’m calling you Dad, because you certainly aren’t one—this is the United Kingdom, not India under British rule. I can date whoever the fuck I want to. I was never meant to be in an arranged marriage. And I was never meant to live with you for 16 years, with my own mum standing by helplessly, repeatedly choking and beating me. You’re the reason why I chased after immortality for so long.” Suzie pushed the chair away and stood over her father. The man, unable to speak, widened his eyes. He had a look of terror on his face. Suzie grinned. “Goodbye, you wanker.”

Suzie unplugged his life support. She walked away as machines beeped and flatlined in her father’s room. The Doctor followed her. The two stepped inside the TARDIS and dematerialized away, the other patients in the hospital not noticing the TARDIS leaving. Nurses and doctors ran into Suzie’s father’s room to save him, but by the TARDIS left he was dead.

  
“So why are we sitting outside 96 Oakham Street again?”

“We’re waiting for Max.”

“Who’s Max?”

“I went to Pilgrim meetings two years ago—2004, since, you know, you don’t exactly follow _years._ It was all part of my plan—to kill Jack Harkness and discover how he came back to life to make sure my bastard father didn’t get in the afterlife, like he so desperately believed. And, if I could kill Jack Harkness—turns out he’s immortal, who knew?—I’d kill myself and bring myself back and see how death felt. And what better way to find someone gullible enough to be horrified of Torchwood than at Pilgrim? It was only a meeting of people discussing supernatural happenings in Cardiff.

“Anyway, I met Max at Pilgrim in 2004. He was perfect for my plan—strong, liked pretty girls, gullible, of course. At Torchwood we have this drug called Retcon, which allows you to forget everything you’ve seen over a short period of time. I would talk to Max about Torchwood, what I did and saw there, and then I’d give him Retcon. Sometimes I’d take him home and have sex with him just before I told him about Torchwood.”

“I assume you drove Max crazy because you told him about Torchwood and forcibly made him forget.”

“It’s the Queen’s fault. She made Torchwood secret and the directors went with it for years. Also, how can you keep Torchwood a secret if you emblazon the organization’s name on the top of the SUV? And in gold lettering, even. You may as well put a red and white target on top while you’re at it.”

“And now you’ve driven Max to the point where he’ll kill because of your disappearance.”

“Which was supposed to be my suicide on Earth, yes. I even programmed Max to recite the first part of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Chariot’ so he could shut the Torchwood Hub down and lock the team inside of it when I came back to life again. The rest of the team’s so dense, they wouldn’t have realized that the ISBN number on the back of Emily Dickinson’s complete poems will unlock the Hub and restore its power.”

“I’m amazed the TARDIS liked you enough to think you’d be a worthy companion. If she knew about this I don’t know whether she’d attempt to land on you or not. I don’t think she would, but she’d try. She knows something I don’t, I’m certain.”

“But I’ve been good inside the TARDIS, Doctor. I drink tea with you, stay in your library and do my personal business far from the console so you can concentrate.”

“Suzie, I’ve heard you a few times. But I’m usually not fazed by distractions.”

“Shh.” Suzie grabbed the Doctor. The two hid behind the side of the house they were talking in front of. Max ran up to the door. He kicked it in. After a short period, Suzie and the Doctor followed him.

By the time Suzie and the Doctor had walked into the house, Max had killed the couple that lived there in their sleep and in their bedroom. He dipped one of his fingers in the corpses and painted a straight vertical line behind the headboard of the couple’s bed.

“Max?” Suzie said as she stepped into the bedroom. “It’s me.”

Max roared and charged at Suzie. “Torchwood!”

The Doctor restrained him. “Wait a moment. I know Suzie has done some terrible things to you, and I regret no one stopped her before she drove you mad. But that doesn’t mean you have to kill anyone else. I can help you regain your sanity. If I can come back from the brink of madness, then you can as well.”

“Torchwood!”

Max pushed the Doctor and Suzie against a wall. In his right hand was a knife. The Doctor was able to get out of the way, but Suzie was not. Max stabbed Suzie in the heart with the knife. Suzie collapsed against the wall.

Max took the knife out and was about to stab Suzie in the heart again when Suzie grabbed his arm. The wound in her chest began to heal. Max’s chest began forming a gash where his heart was. He fell to the floor of the bedroom and bled out.

  
The Doctor and Suzie were sitting in Roahl Dahl Plass. The TARDIS was sitting over the Cardiff Space/Time Rift.

“I think this was about 1967. This spaceship with stolen goods crashed near Cardiff, and inside it was this gauntlet and this knife. They were together. I don’t know what happened to the other gauntlet. I think it’s somewhere still in Cardiff and the alien placed it somewhere where Torchwood wouldn’t find it...yet. They’ll find it. They’re Torchwood.”

“So Jack entrusted you with the gauntlet and knife when you joined Torchwood and you betrayed his trust.”

Suzie nodded. “I discovered that a tiny bit of empathy, no matter how fake it was, allowed the glove to get a person, killed with the knife, to come back to life. It makes the radiation in the gauntlet stronger. That was the thing Jack didn’t realize—for the glove to work, you have to kill someone with the knife. My plan was to kill myself and trigger these murders once someone with a bit more empathy than me came along. That way I could transfer the wound to the other person. “

“You intentionally tried to kill yourself so you could brag to your father about being dead for a few moments. That’s why you tried to kill me.”

“Yes. That and I think I still hated you until you blasted the gauntlet off of my dragon hand. I think. Or maybe that was my way of saying ‘I think you’re cute.’”

“Usually I don’t condone deaths made in my presence, but I have to say, well played, Suzie. Plus, you got Vritra to show you how to close your timeline.”

“Had I died, I was supposed to have attempted to transfer a gunshot wound to the head to Gwen to remain immortal. That is, until Torchwood unravelled my plans and destroyed the gauntlet. And Jack would’ve shot me to death. The end.”

“At least in this timeline your intentions were nobler. They weren’t _nice,_ but certainly nobler. And although you’re still breathing, I have to ask—how did you obtain the power to transfer a wound to another person?”

Suzie looked up in the sky, watching the TARDIS get energy from the Rift. “Vritra told me I would gain the power after I turned back into a human, but I don’t know for sure, Doctor. I guess I used the knife and gauntlet so much it changed my genetic structure.”

Suzie put her left hand on the ground. The Doctor put his right hand on Suzie’s hand.

“Suzie, this is the weirdest first date I’ve ever been on in my life.”

“I’ve had weirder. Have I ever told you about Owen Harper?”

  
“I’ve finally killed the Doctor.”

“No, you haven’t.” The Doctor put Suzie’s hands over his hearts. “My hearts, they’re still beating.”

“Don’t lie. Your death was warm and painless. And now you’ve just come back to life. _You loved it._ ”

“You didn’t kill me. You’ll _never_ kill me. The matter is settled. The end. And now, if you excuse me, I have to get back to the control room. The old girl may want to actually land instead of flying around the vortex for while.”

The Doctor sat up. After a few seconds, he lay down again. Suzie lay down on his chest, listening to his hearts beat. “Your hearts, they sound like they’re marching. Towards where the TARDIS is taking you, I assume.”

“Actually, the TARDIS says she’ll be fine flying around for a few hours as you plan to kill me again. But I’m warning you, you’ll fail again.”

“I doubt it, Doctor.” Suzie grinned.


End file.
